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Stanford Prison Experiment Essay

690 Words3 Pages

The Stanford Prison Experiment portrayed that a prison environment conflicted personalities and roles of an individual to act out of character. From an inmate’s perspective in the American prison system they were powerless. From a guard’s perspective it was the need to instill fear to obtain order in such a hostile environment over dangerous criminals. Considering the fact that the expected two week long experiment only lasted a week, suggests that conditions were more harsh than expected. Dr. Zimbardo challenged ethical principles of psychology dealing with human relations, and resolving ethical issues within a prison environment.
Psychologists have a code of ethical principles to abide by when conduct an experiment, or study involving participants. …show more content…

Their ethics cannot conflict with any legal or governing authority, they must abide by the law. In just a short amount of time the roles given to each subject were in full effect to the point where the experiment was now their reality. The mental state of each participant were completely characterized by the roles they were assigned. The guard’s abused their power, which led to harassment, and other forms of humiliation. Each prisoner would go through a process of dehumanizing before they were an inmate. Part of this process would consist of a full strip search, spraying of chemicals, a dress shmock with an identification number, all heads would be shaved, and a chain would be placed on the right ankle of each inmate to remind them that they are prisoners. This process was a violation of ethics and organizational demand, prisoners lost all rights when imprisoned, but the guard’s forgot that an individual always has human rights. There is a certain extent to the process of humiliating a prisoner without violating his/her human rights. The distress caused psychological harm to many participants leaving them scared from the experience. An example of this psychological harm was by one prisoner who would scream, and cry uncontrollably. Further there were no means of psychiatric treatment for the participants after the experiment to ensure they were in a safe mental state of

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